“Moreover, the standardized formulas were grouped around equally standardized themes, …. A repertoire of similar themes is found in oral narrative and other oral discourse around the world. (Written narrative and other written discourses use themes, too, of necessity, but the themes are infinitely more varied and less obtrusive.)” (p 23)

“‘Reading’ a text means converting it to sound, aloud or in the imagination, syllable-by- syllable …. we can style writing a ‘secondary modeling system’, dependent on a prior primary system, spoken language.” (p 8)

“No information technology developed by humans since our emergence as thinking-speaking beings has come close to equalling, let alone exceeding or in any way replacing, the centrality of language as the essence of our species.” (p 2)

“… from about the year 1000 on, scholastic or analytic reading increasingly replaced the older, slower, subvocalizing rumination of monastic reading, transforming the page ‘from a score for pious mumblers into an optically organized text for logical thinkers.'” (p 11)

Kinasevych, O. (2017, May). Culture in the Balance: Risks and Rewards of Technology in Indigenous Language Learning. Presented at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2017 & 2017 Conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE), Toronto. References Abele, F., & Stasiulis, D. (1989). Canada as a “White Settler … Read more

“Who, in such a demanding communication environment, could possibly have time and wherewithal to learn how to read and write — to master such a system? Mostly the priests, the guardians of all sacred knowledge.” (p 13)